Draft N versus Official N

I was wondering, what will with the difference be between the currently availbile Draft N 1.1 versus what the IEEE will approve as the official 802.11N.

 

The main difference now vs once the 802.11n standard is approved by the IEEE will be compatibility between manufacturers. Right now all the manufacturers have their own Draft-N implementation that don't play nice together.

 

Basically, it just means that an awful lot of things are still subject to change (and many of them are going to change). I read an article a few days ago about all the planned changes. IIRC, they've just finished the specs for draft 2. All the available hardware is based on draft 1. And they're going to make *at least* a draft 3 before they'll even consider finalizing the spec.

One of the things I remember they still needed to change, was how to make it play nice together with all the older standards (pre-N)

According to the article I read though, upgrading to from draft 1 to 2, at least, should be possible simply with a firmware update.. But not sure about updating to support the final version of the spec.

 

If the MFG made a decision to install a large enough firmware (flashram) and powerful cpu it should be handle to handle the Final release. BUT most MFG go the smallest they can to do the job. What I suspect that once the spec is finilazed the current pre 11n spec hw will not work, just like 11b to 11g.

Look at it this way They are still having problems with 11g HW playing well with each other. So how much faith do you think they will get 11n to work with 11b.g .....

 

I have had zero problems with wireless g as long as I turn off all the acceleration crap manufacturers come up with that goes outside the 802.11g standard adopted by the IEEE.